He spent his teen years in college on football scholarships, but
he had terrible grades and was kicked out of five different schools.

At age 21, he began his acting career by traveling around the country
with various regional theater companies. When he was 35 years old,
he landed his breakthrough role in 1976 with the television miniseries
"Rich Man, Poor Man" He was nominated for an Emmy for
his role. After this success, Nolte was cast opposite Jacqueline
Bisset in "The Deep."

Nolte's early film work included roles as a drug-smuggling Vietnam
veteran in "Who'll Stop the Rain;" a disillusioned football
star in "North Dallas Forty," which he developed with
author Peter Gent; free-spirited beat-era writer Neal Cassady in
"Heart Beat" and a reclusive marine biologist in "Cannery
Row." Nolte continued to challenge himself with character roles
such as an American photojournalist in "Under Fire," a
determined lawman in "Extreme Prejudice" and an ex-con
turned playwright in "Weeds."

Best known for his roles in comedies and action films like "48
Hours" and "Down and Out in Beverly Hills," Nolte
has also garnered acclaim as a dramatic star. He received critical
accolades playing a tormented father trying to save his ailing son
in "Lorenzo's Oil" and as a man trying to face his family's
tragic past in Barbara Streisand's "The Prince of Tides,"
for which he was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Golden
Globe for Best Actor. Recently, Nolte has starred in films such
as Merchant Ivory's period drama "Jefferson in Paris"
as Thomas Jefferson; Martin Scorsese's "Cape Fear," with
Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange; "I Love Trouble" opposite
Julia Roberts; James L. Brooks' "I'll Do Anything;" Lee
Tamahori's "Mulholland Falls;" Keith Gordon's "Mother
Night," based on the Kurt Vonnegut novel; and Oliver Stone's
"U-Turn." Nolte recently completed "Nightwatch,"
co-starring Patricia Arquette and Ewan McGregor, and Paul Schrader's
"Affliction" with James Coburn, Willem Dafoe and Sissy
Spacek.

Nolte's acting career has been haunted by his many problems with
women and alcohol. He had a string of bad marriages: to Sheila Page,
Sharon Haddad and Rebecca Linger. His companion of eight years,
Karen Louise Eklund, hit Nolte with a $4.5 million palimony suit.

Director Lee Tamahori, who worked with Nolte in "Mulholland
Falls," told an Hollywood Online interviewer what he thinks
of the actor.

"I've always considered Nick Nolte one of the finest actors
in American cinema," Tamahori said. "He is afraid of nothing,
will go anywhere. He just inhabits space like no one else I've ever
seen, and he will go the distance to accomplish a role.

The epic ABC miniseries made Nolte, who played black sheep Tom Jordache,
an overnight sex symbol. "I was 35. I was a theater actor and
just picking up some extra money in television. I auditioned with
Peter Strauss. After the scene I said to him, 'I'll see you the
day we start shooting.' Peter said, 'You can't tell that!' I said,
'I'll bet you.' I remember discussions while we were doing Rich
Man, Poor Man, [the network] saying 'You know, if this works, we'll
do that book Roots next.'"

THE DEEP (1977)

Meant to be a follow-up to Jaws, this Peter Benchley adventure became
best known for Jacqueline Bisset's wet T-shirt. "Columbia kept
pushing The Deep at me, and I kept saying no, but after a year it
was the only [offer] there. There was no character in the script.
It was about the monster, the deep, the treasure, and Jackie's breasts."

WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN (1978)

Director Karel Reisz's post-Vietnam drama was the first to showcase
Nolte's acting chops. "In the film industry, my mentor has
been Karel. He came on [the set of] The Deep and watched. He said,
'You don't need to communicate to the crew so much; a lot of your
work is wasted entertaining them.' So right away, he took the reins.
He turned me from that big commercial picture to the heart and soul
of the work. Had I not been able to do that, I don't know where
I would have gone."

NORTH DALLAS FORTY (1979)

Nolte helped develop this adaptation of Peter Gent's controversial
novel exposing the dark side of pro football. "I got a call
from the owner of the San Diego Chargers. He said, 'If you're going
to make North Dallas Forty, I'll finance the whole thing.' That
was their attempt to gain control of the film and destroy it. They
would've never made it."

CANNERY ROW (1982)

While shooting the Steinbeck adaptation, Nolte and Debra Winger
developed a rocky relationship on and off screen. "Cannery
Row is a lovely piece. Winger--just like she's said about me, 'He's
weird'--she's got her weirdness too. Those weirdnesses always fit
together in some ways. She drove me crazy; she'd say I drove her
crazy too."

48 HRS. (1982)

Walter Hill's buddy movie spawned countless imitators (including
its own lackluster sequel, 1990's Another 48 HRS.) and helped make
Eddie Murphy a superstar; ironically, Paramount execs initially
weren't sold on the Saturday Night Live star. "[During shooting]
Walter said, 'You know, they want to fire Eddie. They don't think
he's funny.' We refused. After three weeks they just forgot. Years
later we said, 'We should do a sequel.' But it was a bad idea. We
should never have done it. We got a big payday. It was a mistake."

UNDER FIRE (1983)

A drama set during Nicaragua's Sandinista revolution, Fire was accused
of being too leftist. "That's a wonderful film that didn't
get an audience. We approached Julie Christie to play in it. She
didn't think it was left enough."

GRACE QUIGLEY (1985)

Katharine Hepburn starred as an old woman who tries to kill herself
by hiring hitman Nolte. This famous flop was most notable for the
clashes between Nolte and Hepburn, who considered him unprofessional.
"We had to drown at the end, so they scheduled this morning
of drowning tests out in the Atlantic Ocean. Katharine would yell
from the shore, 'I hope you drown!' Afterwards she came up to me
and said, 'You know, Nick, Spencer [Tracy] drank quite a lot. But
he never drank when he was going to work. You've really got to get
a handle on yourself. You've been drunk in every gutter in this
town.' I said, 'Almost. I haven't quite made 'em all.'"

DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS (1986)

To play a bum who moves in with millionaires Richard Dreyfuss and
Bette Midler, Nolte did his own brand of research. "I didn't
bathe, didn't shower, didn't brush my teeth, wore the same clothes,
slept outside downtown, and still, Bette refused to believe I was
the bum. So then I slept outside and accidentally slept in some
poison oak. I got it all across my body. My skin would actually
bubble out. So my makeup man had a big trash can with an herbal
mix and cheesecloth. I would strip down to my underwear and he would
wrap me in these cheesecloths. When Bette saw that, she said, 'I'm
not ever gonna touch that guy! I'm not going near him!' From then
on, I was the bum."

NEW YORK STORIES (1989)

This trilogy of shorts by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola,
and Woody Allen marked the first of two collaborations with Scorsese.
"It was a very gutsy thing for all those guys to do. They knew
the critics would compare them all. But I thought it was one of
the smartest things the business has ever done."

EVERYBODY WINS (1990)

Despite its pedigree--Nolte, Winger, Reisz, and an Arthur Miller
script--the film was a total disappointment. "We had problems
with that piece. It just misses. That, by the way, is the end of
Karel Reisz's career in film. I always felt in an odd way responsible
about that."

Q&A (1990)

Nolte added a walrus mustache, six-inch lifts, and dozens of pounds
for Sidney Lumet's top-notch crime drama. "I went to Sidney's
office to read. I was real skinny 'cause I had just come off Everybody
Wins. Sidney looked at me and said 'Oh, no, this won't do!' I said,
'It'll be fine. I'll go down to West Virginia and I'll come back
every three weeks and we'll talk about it.' So I'd go down to West
Virginia and I'd eat and eat and eat. After three months I had gained
40 or 50 pounds. I was 240 pounds."

CAPE FEAR (1991)

To win the role of Sam Bowden, the lawyer terrorized by an ex-con
played by Robert De Niro, Nolte auditioned for the part by showing
up at the premiere of Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas in character.
"I thought to myself, Marty's only seen me as that big fat
painter guy [from New York Stories]. And I'm real thin now. So I
combed my hair back and put a suit on and went over there. Marty
saw me and he goes, 'Nick! Jesus, you look...wait right here! I
gotta get Bobby!' And he said, 'Listen, can you come for a meeting
tomorrow at two?' I went up there and that was it."

THE PRINCE OF TIDES (1991)

Nolte earned his first Oscar nomination as emotionally scarred football
coach Tom Wingo in Barbra Streisand's adaptation of Pat Conroy's
1986 novel. "Streisand was just so complete in her process.
She had it all together. Barbra knows lighting really well. She's
lit really well. She was just nailed into it."

I'LL DO ANYTHING (1994)

James L. Brooks' infamous musical--which became a nonmusical in
the editing room--still had a happy ending for Nolte. "I thought
[the songs] were really good. After the first screening, [Brooks]
said the first two or three songs would work and then the audience
would catch on to the device. Half of our shooting was the musical.
Vicki [Lewis] was a Broadway actress cast out of New York. We started
to date, and we've just been together ever since."

BLUE CHIPS (1994) I LOVE TROUBLE (1994) MULHOLLAND FALLS (1996)

These constitute what Nolte considers his emptiest period, professionally;
he and his Trouble costar, Julia Roberts, are said to have despised
each other. "After [Tides], I sat with my lawyers and they
said, 'Well now, here's the big money.' And I took a dive, I went
for it. I convinced myself that the scripts were good. I convinced
myself that people were there to make a film. And it really wasn't
about that. It was about making money. [I Love Trouble] was a studio
film, that's all it was. Not my ball game. I didn't belong there.
I've never commented about [Roberts]."

AFTERGLOW (1997)

Alan Rudolph's drama (produced by Robert Altman) starred Nolte as
a womanizing handyman and Julie Christie, who garnered an Oscar
nomination, as an aging ex-actress. "When Julie was receiving
all these accolades at film festivals--Altman and Rudolph quite
frankly were pushing her, and rightly so--I had a house in Fort
Lauderdale, so I said, 'Do you want Afterglow in the [Fort Lauderdale
International] Film Festival?' And, of course, out of that I won
Best Actor. Not that I didn't deserve it! But I was able to call
Rudolph and Altman and say, 'Hey, I just won a film festival as
Best Actor. I was getting so damn jealous that I just wanted you
guys to know that there are other performances in this film too!'"

NIGHTWATCH (1998)

Danish director Ole Bornedal remade his 1994 thriller only to see
Miramax sit on it for almost two years. "I knew we were in
trouble. I had seen the original and it was slow, European, psychological.
It was one of the scariest films I've ever seen. I said to Ole,
'Why do you want to remake this?' As the studio got it, they realized
that they had a European-paced film, and they kept hacking at it
and hacking at it. Ole has gone back to Denmark, and I've never
seen the film."

THE THIN RED LINE (1998)

Nolte was supposed to follow Terrence Malick's WWII epic with the
Merchant Ivory drama A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries--until the
Line shoot went long. "I realized quickly that you can't lock
dates with Terry. You're either in the film or you can't do the
film. I finally had to make the phone call. I just said to James
[Ivory], 'I'll be a detriment to the film.' I imagine they cussed
me up one side and down the other. I heard Kris Kristofferson did
a wonderful job with it."